The laughter rattled in my head like stones in a bottle. Her words rushed all around me. 'a.r.s.enical compounds,' 'laughing death,' 'bleeding to death,' 'too rageful.' I looked at my hands. They were clenched so hard the knuckles were white.

"Tell me just one thing more," I asked very quietly.

"Yes?" Her face was positively maternal.

"Will you sell me poison for my revenge?"

"Oh, good. I have waited a long time for this moment. At last, my dear, you are one of us."

La Voisin rose, and I followed her into her little cabinet. Her face had a strange, impa.s.sive calm as she unlocked the first door of the tall, gilded cupboard opposite the fire. "Sooner or later, no matter what her condition, your mother will send for you. She has never yet failed to seek out the most fashionable fortune-tellers. At that time, you must be ready to be the avenging arm of G.o.d," she said quietly. She took down one of her ledgers from the shelf. It was all bound in dark green leather with gold stamping. She set it on her writing desk and opened it up. "Let us see," she said, running her finger down the rows of neat writing. "Pasquier...P...no, this is R. My goodness, not only is my waist spreading, I do believe my eyes are fading. I suppose I shall soon be wanting gla.s.ses. No matter how we hide, age finds us at last." She put back R and pulled down the correct ledger.

As she leafed through the book, pausing occasionally, I could read some of the entries upside down: Pajot, wishes to make a pact with the Devil. Perdriere, Madame, purchase of powders to soften behavior of husband. Vicomtesse de Polignac, poisons for La Valliere, a.s.sorted sorceries for holding lovers, for finding treasure; a formula for breast enlargement. Poulaillon, Madame de, regular purchases of slow poison. Names, desires, numbers: poisons bought, amount, kind, and price. Aphrodisiacs purchased, powders pa.s.sed under the chalice, White Ma.s.ses to Saint Rabboni, the mender of marriages, said over shirts, Black Ma.s.ses done with infant's blood in the chalice. How many. The price. The purpose. The secrets of the monstrous world of the Sun King, written in a heavy green ledger.

"Pasquier. Yes. Here it is. Wishes for a youthful skin...no, skin cream is too slow. You will have only one chance, and it must not be traced to your visit. Something she must take in weekly doses. c.u.mulative. Delayed action, so her suspicions won't be aroused." She shut the book. "A youth restorative...a tonic syrup to enhance the beauty...I think it will do nicely." She replaced the ledger on the shelf and locked the door. The green wood hissed on the hearth between the cat andirons. Her old gray tom roused himself momentarily from sleep to stretch and yawn before the fire. La Voisin searched briefly among her big bunch of keys and found the one for the second set of doors in the cupboard. She inserted it in the lock and flung both doors wide to reveal a set of shelves with rows of bottles of different sizes, all neatly labeled. Most were the telltale green of La Trianon's laboratory, but there were others. Boxes of hair and nail clippings, jars of strange oleaginous substances. A box of black candles. Several wax figurines. Larger jars with glory hands and other indescribable body parts, black and shriveled like old mushrooms. Dried toads, c.o.c.ks' t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. In the stillness, I could hear my heart beating.

"Grenouillet...the laughing death...so obvious, wolfsbane...no...distilled toad...no, too characteristic...powder of diamonds...too unreliable. Hemlock...vipers' venom..." She selected two bottles and set them on a low shelf that topped a set of drawers at the base of the cupboard. "For this job, white a.r.s.enic is best, I think. a.r.s.enic and syrup of roses-a poetic touch." She took an unlabeled green bottle and with a tiny funnel filled it from the first two bottles. Then she corked it and sealed the cork with wax by holding a dripping candle over it. "Let's see. A touch of luxury..." and she snipped a bit of gold thread from a narrow wooden spool and wound it into the wax about the neck and cork of the little vial to make a seal. "Very elegant," she p.r.o.nounced it, as she put it into my cold, trembling hand. "Remember," she added, "this is justice. You can expect it nowhere else. I will wait for the news that the job is finished."

I left the sorceress's house, still weak with the shock of my new knowledge. La Voisin was no amateur, no housewife with an unpleasant relative and a jar of "mort aux rats" in her cupboard. She was a professional poisoner of the highest rank, perhaps the greatest in Europe. As I summoned my waiting carriage, I felt suddenly lost. See where vengeance has led you, Genevieve Pasquier, a voice said in my head. Through righteousness, you have descended into evil. I seated myself and inspected the vicious little bottle in my hand. "Justice," she had said. Yes, it had to be justice. "For you, Father," I whispered, as the driver cracked his whip and the carriage rattled into the misty autumn evening. That night even the cordial couldn't put me to sleep. I took dose after dose, and even then, sleep was filled with monstrous dreams. Above the horrible shapes and strange, distorted faces I could hear the Shadow Queen's ironic laughter. "One of us at last, at last, at last..."

I woke the next morning sick, and the morning after that too. The hours slipped by like green eels, all tangled and slippery, one very much like another. But even the most terrible of thoughts soon becomes ordinary with repet.i.tion; eventually I became well again and the green bottle in the dressing table drawer became a common thing, no different than a thimble or a box of mouches. And so it was that I emerged a week later, all hollow eyed from days with no food but opium, for an evening of amus.e.m.e.nt at the d.u.c.h.esse de Bouillon's, where I had been invited with a Spanish horoscopist. There amidst brilliant gossip and much discussion of the occult I read fortune after fortune until the horoscopist, with a malicious smile, led the Duc de Vivonne to me and, amidst the laughter of the company, asked what I saw in the future of a man so gallant. But as his shadow fell across the oracle gla.s.s, the water within turned blood red.

"You will soon have a new mistress," I said quietly. Luckily that, too, pa.s.sed for wit, for Vivonne was a well-known rakeh.e.l.l, and the company laughed again. But I knew that moment in my heart that she had gone to Longueval despite every promise, and now I needed only to know where they had left her.

On the way home, I kept peering from the carriage window into the alleys as we pa.s.sed, as if I might see something; but it was a foolish idea, because the maze of dark alleys behind the princ.i.p.al streets would never admit a carriage, nor would they be safe for any night wanderer on foot. The night has made you stupid, Genevieve, I cursed myself. Tomorrow morning I will make a plan, and begin my search of the hospitals.

But the next morning, before I was even out of bed, Sylvie showed in Marie-Angelique's little maid. She was carrying a large bird cage, and her eyes were swollen.

"You know where she is," I cried, setting aside my cup of chocolate and throwing back the covers. "Quickly, Sylvie-my clothes. We'll go to her; we'll get her back!" Sylvie hurried to the armoire to fetch my dress and petticoats.

"She said to bring you the bird if she didn't return by last night, and she hasn't."

"But where is she now?" I asked. At the armoire door, Sylvie paused.

"I don't know; n.o.body does. They either come back, or they don't-that's all." The little maid rubbed her eyes with her knuckles.

"Just what do you mean by 'they'?" I asked slowly, the horror of the thing beginning at last to fill my mind.

"She's not the first, you know. But I liked her, I did. Mademoiselle Pasquier was not made for the life-I could tell. She was different, kinder. But what could I do? She went to him, all a-tremble, to tell him she would find a woman to do it. But I saw him just sit there behind his big writing desk without looking up from his papers and say, all smooth and cool, I hope you don't mean La Voisin. I have no intention of allowing you to set me up for blackmail.' 'In the name of our love,' she said, 'I could never even imagine such a thing. I could never stoop to such dishonor.' 'In my experience, there is no dishonor to which a woman cannot stoop. You can hardly admit you have not stooped yourself more than once.' She got all stiff and clenched her hands. 'Now, now,' he said, 'if your love was true, you would not question my choice in this matter.' She bowed her head and left, like a lamb to the slaughter. 'G.o.d wishes me to die for my sins,' she said, as I saw her to the carriage. 'Give the bird to my sister. It will live longer than both of us.' She knew, Madame. G.o.d knows how, but she knew."

"I am going now to search the hospitals and the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Chatelet. Will you come with me?" I asked her.

"I dare not, Madame. I can't be gone long. I could vanish, too, and he'd just tell everyone I went home to my relatives in the country." I remembered the head beneath the floorboards.

"I'm sorry," I said softly, and she looked shocked at the unexpected apology as she set down the bird cage and fled.

"Sylvie," I asked as I heard the back door slam downstairs, "can you accompany me?"

"Madame, your logic has deserted you. If you are seen making inquiries, it will tie the abortion to us, and to La Voisin. I have learned a charm to prevent talking under torture-but you, how could you bear the water torture or the boot? No, every one of us will be lost because of your foolishness over a friend that is lost. Let her be. I don't wish to be executed for an abortion some stranger botched." Sylvie's face looked hard and shrewd, the face of a country woman calculating whether to wring an overaged laying hen's neck.

"Sylvie, she's my sister."

"Your sister? Why, she's no more than twenty, I'd imagine. Your mother certainly couldn't have taken that alchemical stuff...or is that just your way of talking?" I slumped over, still sitting on the edge of the bed, and held my head in my hands.

"She's my full sister, Sylvie. My older sister. Don't tell Madame I told you. She'll never forgive me. Just help me, please. She was more to me than any mother on earth." I could hear Sylvie's foot tap impatiently.

"My goodness, little Miss, you certainly had me fooled. A hundred and fifty years old! I thought you were lying. Maybe sixty or seventy, with that sharp tongue and those old-ladyish ways. There's got to be something to that wrinkle stuff, I thought. I'll be wanting it myself someday, it works so fine. Next thing you'll be telling me is that you don't actually read fortunes in the gla.s.s."

"I do read fortunes," I said in a small voice. "I'm just not very old. Only my heart's old-before its time." I could feel her studying my face and looked up to see her standing over me.

"Madame, let me make a suggestion. Leave the Marquise de Morville at home today. Everyone in Paris recognizes her. We'll take up the hem on my Sunday dress, and you can go as a maid. Not hers. Any servant of hers will be thought to be a conspirator, too, and interrogated. They need to think you're ignorant of everything. You're clever enough to play an old lady. Think of a disguise, a good story."

And so that is how that very day a battered fiacre disgorged a crippled servant of the house of Matignon at the Chatelet, where she was shown by the police to the dank cellar where all the bodies that turn up in Paris lie for three days before burial. The stench of the place nearly drove me away, but I pushed forward to the slabs. Above them on hooks hung the victims' clothes, to aid in the identification of the bloated, putrid bodies.

"This servant girl, she was well dressed when she disappeared?"

"Yes, in my mistress's clothes, the hussy. But my mistress is a Christian woman and forgives her. She'll have her back with a good beating to teach her a thing or two."

"More than she deserves, I say. Was it yellow hair?"

"Yes, yellow...but not like that one...that's dyed."

"Then she's not here...probably left town with a lover by now. Your mistress will have to find another maid, I fear."

By the time the fiacre halted at the Parvis Notre-Dame, before the main door of the Hotel Dieu, my back, unsupported by my steel corset, was aching dreadfully with each swaying step I took. I suppose it's a kind of progress, I thought, that I can't slide back into my old bobbing, crab-wise walk without this much agony. A beggar on the street made a sign to avert the evil eye. That had never happened in the old days. Then I remembered. I had left behind the marquise's posture, gown, and walking stick, but I had kept her commanding, shrewd eyes. Oh, goodness, I must look like a witch, I thought, hastily lowering my eyes and a.s.suming the sly, apologetic look of a household servant.

I had not expected to find what I sought so soon. The novice pointed from the door of the women's ward down the ancient stone hall lined with curtained beds. "She's there," she snapped, "the one on the right side of bed number four. Though why her family would want her is beyond me; better to let her vanish. She's lucky she's dying-it's the sort of thing they do to escape the punishment for infanticide. But she'll not escape G.o.d's punishment, that I can a.s.sure you." I'd rather deal with witches any day than this nasty woman, I thought.

Marie-Angelique lay crowded into a bed with four other women, one of whom seemed already dead and another raving with the fever that follows a bad childbirth. A man in the blue suit and wide, white plumed hat of the police was leaning over the bedside with a notebook.

"No farther!" A burly sergeant, unshaved and menacing, stepped from an alcove. "She's being questioned; you'll have to wait. Are you her maid?" I sensed the danger in the question.

"No, I'm from the family, sir. She was lost to us through sin, but when she vanished, her brother sent us all out in search of her so that he could forgive her; he's that good a Christian, he is."

"Brother, eh? And who might he be?"

"Why, etienne Pasquier, the avocat, at the House of the Marmousets." Ah, lovely. I shall entangle my respectable brother in a horrid scandal. How he'll puff and pose when the police arrive at his door and go through the house questioning everyone to try to find out who procured the abortion.

The sergeant turned to see what progress the policeman at the bedside was making with his inquiries. Marie-Angelique's lips did not seem to be moving. The man shook her shoulder to try to rouse her; her eyes opened momentarily and rolled with terror, but not a sound escaped her. Honor, I thought. That worthless Vivonne's honor. How wasted your love was, Sister. Tell it all, tell it all.

"I know it's wrong, but I can't help feeling sorry for them," the sergeant muttered. "Poor little girl. That one was beautiful, too. And now she won't live out the day. Don't think we're being rough-it's the only chance we have to get the name of the abortionist. We execute swine like that."

"G.o.d grant you find him, the dreadful murderer," I agreed. The man at the bedside sighed with disappointment and stood up, looking in our direction. He never changed his expression as he stared directly into my face. It was Desgrez. I couldn't start or flee but stood as still as a bird that is paralyzed by the snake's gaze. Courage, I said to myself, and, making my face look stupid, I shuffled with an exaggerated limp toward the bedside.

"Don't I remember you from somewhere?" he said blandly.

"A servant of the family, sent to search her out, though why they bothered, I can't say," interrupted the novice, who had returned with a pitcher of water and several towels over her arm.